A battle is playing out in the Red Sea as Yemen's Houthi militia attacks commercial shipping vessels headed to the Suez Canal using weapons supplied by Iran. Now a US-led task force is fighting back. We compare the weapons and tactics and tell you who holds the power in this global conflict.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00There's a conflict bubbling in the Red Sea that could shake geopolitics and the global
00:06economy.
00:07The Iranian-backed Houthi militia is taking on all kinds of commercial ships that are
00:12bound for the Suez Canal.
00:15Houthis say that they're doing this as support for Palestinians, and the U.S.-led task force
00:21is fighting back.
00:24Let's look at the balance of power between the Houthis and U.S. forces.
00:28Hi, I'm Sam Feldman.
00:29I'm a defense editor with Business Insider.
00:32I'm a U.S. Navy veteran who served aboard destroyers.
00:36The United States is using an assortment of weapons in its arsenal to try to strike back
00:46at Houthi capabilities generally, and then specifically take out observed missile launchers
00:53as they're spotted.
00:55In the big strikes the U.S.-led coalition has increasingly had to make, they use cruise
01:00missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile that costs about $2 million a piece.
01:04These are the kind of weapons that were used to strike at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan
01:10immediately after the attacks of September 11th.
01:15Tomahawk is very effective against a variety of fixed targets, even hardened ones.
01:20So a command center, an area where missile launchers are stored, air defense systems,
01:26radars, and so it has pinpoint accuracy.
01:31It has a variety of different warheads it can carry, including nuclear.
01:35The U.S. also uses Hellfire missiles.
01:38Those are air-to-ground, fairly short-range guided missiles.
01:42Those can be very effective.
01:43They can be fired by an MQ-9 Reaper drone.
01:47Houthis are supplied by Iran.
01:49They have approximately 200,000 fighters in this pocket of Yemen that they control.
01:56The weapons that are flowing to the Houthis are Iranian-made, and those are predominantly
02:00of two types.
02:01One is drones, and secondarily it is missiles, cruise and ballistic missiles.
02:08And so some examples of the different Iranian-made weapons, one is the Charlie 802 missile that
02:13was originally a weapon associated with China that is manufactured in Iran.
02:18It's a cruise missile.
02:20The U.S. is showing that it can effectively stop the Charlie 802, but that's only if it's
02:25within the air defense intercept ranges.
02:29So outside of that, a merchant ship has no defense against a fairly accurate, powerful
02:35weapon like a Charlie 802 cruise missile.
02:38Another example would be these Iranian-made ballistic missiles.
02:43Those can carry more payload and are faster than a comparable cruise missile.
02:49A cruise missile will come in in more of a sea-skimming attack, whereas a ballistic missile
02:54may follow a different type of terminal trajectory.
02:57Both are pretty threatening.
02:59And recently we've seen the Houthis firing what's known as ASBMs.
03:04Those are anti-ship ballistic missiles.
03:06They're more difficult to intercept because they're coming in faster.
03:10It forces the air defenders to be that much faster and on point to identify threats, and
03:16then assign weapons to them to knock them out, and then try to warn ships that are threatened
03:21to get out of the area as fast as they can.
03:27The U.S. is predominantly losing two types of aircraft.
03:31First one is the MQ-9 Reaper drone.
03:34The Reaper is an ideal platform for this kind of warfare.
03:37It's a $30 million drone.
03:39It can carry the same Hellfire missiles that a manned fixed-wing planes can carry.
03:45It can basically glide, kind of hover over areas of interest to the U.S. military.
03:50It has sensors like cameras to detect enemy movements that the U.S. may want to stop.
03:56So in other words, the MQ-9 may be loitering around the coastlines of Yemen, but is like
04:03zooming in with its sensors to look for movements of trucks that look to be carrying missiles,
04:09for example, or looking at potential launch points for where drones may be.
04:14The Reaper also is a combat drone, meaning that if there is a target of opportunity that's
04:18spotted, then the Reaper drone could potentially attack it with those Hellfire missiles.
04:24Another important aircraft in this air fight is the carrier-based fighter, the F-18 Hornet
04:32and Super Hornet.
04:33They're not going to have the on-station time of a Reaper, but they'll also have sensors
04:38aboard that make it an ideal asset to spot enemy movements.
04:42And they're going to have weapons.
04:44They could carry joint direct attack munitions.
04:47They may carry a bevy of more air-to-air missiles that would be useful for striking out, whether
04:52it's a Houthi helicopter or a Houthi drone.
04:56So the U.S. is also using SH-60 Seahawks.
05:00Those are multi-purpose helicopters.
05:02Normally, they're doing a whole range of missions, from potentially picking up aviators whose
05:08planes have splashed into the water.
05:10In this particular fight, the helicopters are assisting ships with identifying Houthi
05:16drones and also Houthi boats.
05:18Houthis have, on a couple occasions, sent boats, maybe packed with explosives, towards
05:23the international shipping.
05:25And helicopters are a very effective way to spot them and stop them with onboard missiles
05:32and guns.
05:33So, one of the things the Houthis are doing is the Houthis are also launching drones.
05:37These drones are pretty cheap, and so one of the problems of this kind of warfare is
05:42that a drone that may cost $10,000 or $30,000, the U.S. is forced to take out with a $2 or
05:50$4 million intercept missile.
05:52That raises problems for U.S. production and how expensive it is to defend this critical
05:58strait.
06:02The eyes of this task force are the spy radar systems, as well as the radar system aboard
06:10the A2C Hawkeye.
06:13There's like a giant kind of dish above this aircraft where this air and ground search
06:18radar is.
06:19And so, these assets are able to look out and try to see where there may be Houthi missiles
06:25or drones.
06:27Spotting these threats as soon as they are in the air is critical to this fight.
06:33And so, these sensors are the first part of the fight.
06:36The Houthis have surface-to-air missiles, which look to be pretty antiquated, like the
06:41S-75, Soviet-made SAM system.
06:45So there are some threats to American aircraft in and around Yemeni airspace.
06:51We've seen two MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down, and the Houthis have taken them out, likely
06:56with surface-to-air missiles.
06:57So the threat to manned and unmanned aviation is not insignificant.
07:05The Houthis don't have a navy.
07:07So the U.S. has quite a lot of firepower in and around this area as the tensions have
07:13risen with the Houthis.
07:16The U.S. has the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, and that's made up of the aircraft
07:20carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier air wing, the cruiser, the Philippine Sea,
07:26and then the destroyers, Gravely, Mason, and Laboon.
07:30And so, those ships make up the bulk of the U.S.-led coalition, or the U.S.-led task force
07:37that's in this area.
07:38The U.S. has devoted significant combat resources to this task force in the Red Sea.
07:43There's probably 6,500 to 7,000 American sailors who are part of the effort.
07:49There is what's known as an SSGN.
07:52That is a guided-missile submarine.
07:55It's a nuclear-powered American submarine that lurks and can carry up to 154 Tomahawk
08:02missiles.
08:03That's more than any other ship in the U.S. fleet.
08:05Most of the weapons aboard a surface combatant, like a destroyer or a cruiser, are stored
08:12in vertical launch cells.
08:13They're like big tubes where the weapons are stored, and then when the weapon is fired,
08:19it's ignited in the tube and then blasts out over the deck.
08:24It goes from flat to moves vertical, exposing the missile underneath that's then firing
08:29and pushing out and leaving behind a trail of fire and smoke as it takes off.
08:36Gravely used the SeaWiz, a close-in weapon system, to shoot down a Houthi-fired cruise
08:42missile.
08:43That is a really significant achievement by the Gravely and by the U.S. Navy.
08:47This is the first combat use of the SeaWiz in naval conflict, and this was successful.
08:54I served aboard a destroyer.
08:56I've stared at plenty of air and surface search radars.
09:00This is a very frightening situation that the Gravely was in because you're down to
09:05one of your last resort weapons to defend the ship.
09:09I actually had worked with that system when it was land-based.
09:12I think it would be very stressful to be watching, either seeing something pop up on your screen,
09:19like this cruise missile, to see on your air search radar that it's either gotten through
09:25your first layer of missiles or it wasn't spotted and now needs to be engaged at such
09:30close range that you're only using this last resort gun system.
09:35We do know that this is about as stressful as it comes in an air defense game.
09:42The Houthis control about a third of the territory of Yemen and more than two-thirds of the population.
09:50They are challenging international shipping that is going through the Red Sea.
09:55That's a really critical transit route because the Red Sea connects to the Suez Canal and
10:02that links the Mediterranean with shipping routes that go into the Indian Ocean.
10:07Twenty percent of the world's shipping containers are estimated to go through the route, and
10:14it's forcing the companies that operate these ships and their insurers to start thinking
10:19twice about which routes they're going to take.
10:22We're seeing that the costs of shipping are rising substantially.
10:26The cost of an average, a standard 40-foot shipping container that is going from Asia
10:32to the U.S. east coast has risen by 135 percent since last fall.
10:41The fight shows no sign of stopping any time soon.
10:45The Houthis have attacked three ships with missiles so far in early March.
10:50They've killed three crew members and forced the abandoning of one vessel.
10:54Another one was sunk.
10:56A recent attack featured as many as three dozen drones that forced American planes to
11:02shoot them down.
11:04So even after all the attacks, the U.S. will escalate further.
11:08None of that has persuaded the Houthis to actually stop or reduce the attacks, and if
11:13anything, the Houthis are showing that they still have the capability to actually damage
11:18some of these ships.
11:19Despite the widespread efforts of this U.S.-led task force.
11:24The Houthis have survived a brutal war against Saudi Arabia, and they are experts at evading
11:32air power.
11:33And the U.S. has been hesitant to escalate for fear that it may lead to more attacks
11:40or a larger confrontation with Iran, and there doesn't seem to be the political willingness
11:45to risk the larger confrontation with Iran that that may come with it.
11:54The balance of power lies with the Houthis.
11:56The Houthis are next to this critical strait for international, used by international commerce,
12:03and the Houthis have the weapons to threaten it indefinitely, and it would require the
12:09U.S. to take much larger combat action in order to fully remove that threat.
12:15And at such a scale that it may trigger a larger confrontation with Iran, that's not
12:21a fight the Biden administration really wants to provoke.
12:45For more UN videos visit www.un.org